Now an experience picked up in a progress of some three hundred thousand miles is not to be slighted; so I leaned with my best ear over the coachman’s shoulder, in order to catch every syllable.
“I have set on the box, man and boy,” said Bat, looking straight ahead between his leaders, “a matter of full thirty year, and what’s more, never missing a day—barring the Friday I was married; and one of my remarks is—I never see a sailor in top-boots.”
“Now I think of it, Bat,” said I, a little disconcerted at my windfall from the tree of knowledge, “I have had some experience in travelling myself, and certainly do not recollect such a phenomenon.”
“I’ll take my oath you haven’t,” said Bat, giving the near leader a little switch of self-satisfaction. “I once driv the Phenomenon myself. There’s no such thing in nature. And I’ll tell you another remarkable remark I’ve made through life—I never yet see a Jew Pedlar with a Newfoundland dog.”
“As for that, Bat,” said I, perhaps willing to retort upon him a little of my own disappointment, “though I cannot call such a sight to mind—I will not undertake to say I have never met with such an association.”
“If you have, you’re a lucky man,” said Bat, somewhat sharply, and with a smart cut on the wheeler; “I belong to an association too, and we’ve none of us seen it. There’s a hundred members, and I’ve enquired of every man of ’em, for it’s my remark. But some people see a deal more than their fellows. Mayhap you’ve seen the other thing I’ve observed through life, and that’s this—I’ve never observed a black man drive a long stage.”
“Never, Bat,” said I, desiring to conciliate him, “never in the whole course of my stage practice; and for many years of my life I was a daily visitant to Richmond.”
“And no one else has ever seen it,” said Bat. “That’s a correct remark, anyhow. As for Richmond, he never drove a team in his life, for I asked him the question myself, just after his fight with Shelton.”
THE CONTRAST.
“I HOPE the Leviathan is outward-bound,” I ejaculated, half aloud, as I beheld the Kit-Kat portion of the Man-Mountain occupying the whole frame of the coach-window. But Hope deceived as usual; and in he came.